Take Photos of Your Young Children at Bath Time and Lose Custody of Them; Overreaction or A Warning for Parents in Custody Cases
Imagine you are on vacation with your three young daughters (ages 18 months, 4, and 5). Like most young parents, you take a lot of photos of your children during the vacation. One night during the vacation you are relaxed and the kids are in a playful, goofy mood during bath time and you take a few photos of them. After you return from vacation, you turn in your 144 vacation photos to be copied at your local Wal Mart (of which 8 photos concern your young children partially nude in the bath). Wal Mart calls the police and reports you as potentially possessing child pornography.
Imagine that during the investigation of this allegation that you are identified as a potential child abuser to your neighbors, relatives, and co-workers and that at the end of investigation you are suspended from your job with the local school district and your names are placed on a state child abuser registry. Despite your pleas of innocence, your children are removed from your custody by the local state agency and not returned to your care for thirty days and then only after a medical evaluation of the children has demonstrated no indications of abuse and a judge has ordered the return of the children to you. This horrifying scenario sounds like it might only be found in the script for a bad soap opera. Unfortunately, for Lisa and Anthony Demaree it is horrifyingly true. The Demarees are now suing the State of Arizona and the Wal Mart corporation for damages to themselves and to their children. Experienced divorce attorneys and marital and family lawyers in West Palm Beach, in Wellington, and elsewhere in Palm Beach County acknowledge that children are abused and neglected and that child abuse and neglect is a terrible thing. At the same time, divorce practitioners also recognize that in attempting to protect children, sometimes innocent people are caught up in the system. Everyone wants to believe that the above scenario would never happen to them. However, I am sure that the Demarees thought the same thing before their children were removed from their care because of the potential hyper-vigilence and overreaction of the State of Arizona and the Wal Mart Corporation. This case also provides a cautionary tale for couples in stormy or highly contentious divorce or post-divorce custody (majority time sharing) or visitation (contact schedule) disputes. In these situations, the parties are highly suspicious of each other and often may be hyper-vigilent and may overreact to any potentially negative fact, occurrence, and statement of a child and will report them to the police, state social services agency, and/or litigate them in court. It is in such cases that false allegations of abuse and/or neglect may occur. For more information about the Demaree Case, please see the relevant New York Times article by clicking here. To watch a video interview of the Demarees and a report of their case, please click here.